Monday was my first day as a stay-at-home dad. It’s temporary — what isn’t — but as I wrote Sunday night, it’s an experience I’m really trying to soak in with the likelihood that it’ll only last a month or so with the potential for sports to return in July.
My wife and I are the parents of an intelligent, caring and loquacious three-year-old who keeps us on our toes constantly with the things she says. When she was maybe 18 months old, she told her mom if she kept behaving a certain way, there was “going to be consequences.”
Four syllables at 18 months? Not bad.
So when she was sitting on my office chair after her nap on Monday, she had a thoughtful look and asked me a question I wasn’t entirely blindsided by.
We had talked earlier in the day on the swings about how when I was young, I was in a bad accident and how uncle Cody and I had gotten hurt really bad and how our step-daddy went to live with Jesus.
Like all three-year-olds, she had a million follow-ups but seemed to understand.
Flash forward to about three hours later.
“Dad, why I haven’t I met your daddy?” I felt a small lump in my throat sort of like the one from earlier, and I assured her that she’d met my father but to remember that my stepdad had, again, gone to live with Jesus.
She frowned. “That makes me sad.”
“Me too, sweetie.”
“And dad?”
I prepared for a question I wasn’t sure how to answer, whatever it was. She was really pulling at my heartstrings.
“Yes?”
“Can I have some fruit snacks?”
Three-year-olds, people. They don’t give you a manual for three-year-olds.